


Because I drew him out of the water

by irisdouglasiana



Category: Luke Cage (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 15:17:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8494945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: Nobody knew Mariah like Cornell knew her; nobody knew how to hurt her quite so well. How to bring back all the rotten stuff, all the ugliness, all the things she tried to forget. She knew the words to wound him too; cut him down to size. 
But with Cornell gone, what is left?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Exodus 2:10. "And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water."

Mariah’s hands are still shaking. Tugging at her dress, patting down her hair, clasped painfully tight in her lap. Not even an hour ago, these same hands shoved her cousin backward through the window and jabbed him with the mic stand over and over until he was dead. She stares straight ahead, seeing nothing in front of her, just remembering the red glow of the lights on Cornell’s shocked face. The ride from Harlem’s Paradise to home has never felt so long.

“You have to call it in,” Shades says from the driver’s seat. His voice sounds very far away right now.

“What? Call the police?” She sees him glancing at her in the rearview mirror, and it jolts her out of her own head long enough to wonder what he was doing at the club anyway, and how did he have Alex’s number so he could call to get her clean clothes, and the _bottle_ , what did he do with the bottle, and…

“It has to be you,” he says patiently. “You have to be the one to establish the narrative. You call the police, then the press. If we play this right, we’ll have it pinned on Luke Cage so fast they won’t even ask questions.”

“I know that,” she snaps. She’s not an idiot.

“Okay.” He straightens up and his voice takes on an authoritative edge. “Councilwoman Dillard, when was your last communication with Mr. Stokes?”

“This morning,” she begins a little hesitantly. “I…I called Cornell because we needed to talk, but he was busy. So I decided to come to the club that night.”

“You don’t sound very sure about that.”

“I came to the club around 11:00,” Mariah continues, irritation seeping into her voice. “And I saw—I saw Cornell lying on the floor. Covered in blood.”

“So you’re telling me he was already dead when you arrived,” Shades says. “You didn’t notice anything suspicious when you entered the club? No sign of forced entry?”

“I used the VIP entrance, so I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. But…but then I heard a girl crying. Candace Miller, one of the hostesses. She said she saw Luke Cage attack Cornell. He ran away when he saw her.”

“Luke Cage,” Shades repeats. “But you didn’t see him yourself.”

“No, I didn’t. But I know that super freak hated my cousin.”

“Mr. Stokes’ arrest caused all sorts of political problems for you, didn’t it? Is that what you wanted to talk to him about? Perhaps you were angry at him.”

She looks at him sharply. “I was frustrated by what happened. But…” she drops her voice almost to a whisper and a sob escapes her throat, “I loved him.”

“Good,” he nods as they pull up in front of her brownstone. He shuts off the engine and looks at her. “How are you feeling now?”

“How do you think?” she says tightly as she opens the car door.

“Mariah,” he says, as if he has any right to call her by her first name, “you did what you had to do.” He sounds completely sure of this; no room for _maybes_ or _what ifs_. It brings her back to earlier that day, a whole different lifetime, when he had surprised her in her own house. Gripped her wrist when she tried to slap him. _Do you remember me from when I was a kid?_

She searches her memory again and can’t find him, but she recognizes the look in his eyes. This is someone who spent his childhood hungry and hungering, who was nobody, who was nothing. Boys and girls like him had flitted in and out of Mabel’s place constantly—there one week, gone the next. Despite it all, Mabel had always provided for Mariah and Cornell, and Mariah had never known what it was like to go to bed hungry, or to not have clothes or basic necessities. She had other terrors to contend with.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t share Shades’ certainty; the easy justification that there had been no other way, without the complications of _family first_. She has no answer for him as she as she steps out of the car and pulls her coat around her tighter, shivering in the cold. “Where are you going?” she asks instead.

“To plant evidence,” he says with a shrug, as though that should be the obvious next step. For him, perhaps it is.

Mariah nods, closes the car door, and watches Shades drive off. For a moment, she feels like the ground might give out from under her, because there goes the only person who saw the whole thing; she doesn’t even _know_ him, so how can she be sure he won’t betray her the first chance he gets? What does he want in return? Maybe she’ll have to kill him, too—

She nearly laughs out loud at that thought. Yes, and then she’d have _two_ murders to cover up, instead of just one. She takes a deep breath before heading inside and going straight to the bathroom so she can throw up. Her hands are still trembling a bit as she stumbles over to the sink to wash her face and fix her makeup. She gulps down a glass of water and gazes at herself in the mirror. Her haggard reflection stares back. Does she look like a murderer? Does she look like Mabel?

She drives herself back to the club a half hour later—better to not get Tony involved in this as well. Her shoes tap quietly down the hallway as she enters the main room. It’s never this silent in Harlem’s Paradise. There’s always music playing somewhere, or staff moving around equipment, or the clink of glassware in the kitchen. But all she can hear is her own breathing as she approaches the stage, where Cornell’s body is still lying under a bloody sheet, and now she knows this wasn’t a dream after all. This is real. This is what she did.

Part of her is waiting for Cornell to throw off the sheet and sit up and start laughing, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth—ah, Mariah, you’re no different than Mabel; I knew it all along! Nobody knew her like Cornell knew her; nobody knew how to hurt her quite so well. How to cut her down and make her feel small. How to bring back all the rotten stuff, all the ugliness, all the things she tried to forget. _I—didn’t—want—it!_

And yet, Cornell was what she had made him, wasn’t he—it was her hands that rocked him back and forth as a baby, her hands that made sure he had enough to eat. His small hand in hers as they walked together for his first day of school. He cried when she had to leave; clung to her arm and refused to let go. She had peeled him off of her and told him to stop being such a baby, because he needed to learn how to be stronger and she couldn’t take care of him forever. How could she have known that in the end, she wouldn’t be able to protect him from herself?

Mariah closes her eyes and retraces her steps in her mind, watching everything on rewind. She sees herself sitting at the bar in silence, hands pressed up against her chest, heart thumping wildly in her ribcage, Cornell’s body lying next to her. Shades melts back into the shadows, a ghost. She rewinds further and there she is putting the mic stand down on the stage, no trace of blood on it. And there is Cornell, not falling from the window but rising up to it. The shattered glass replaces itself in the window frame and Mariah sets the bottle down. Cornell shrinks in front of her, turning back into a teenager, then a boy, then a baby: her baby in a basket, her Moses. She cradles him in her arms for a moment before gently placing him back in the water and letting him drift away.

She wipes away her tears, picks up the phone, and calls 911.

**Author's Note:**

> Because Mariah keeps calling back to me, demanding to be heard.


End file.
